Progress success

Progress M-13M/45 launched on 30/10 and docked to the Pirs module of the ISS on 2/11 with no anomalies, a great relief to everyone! The crew will get some iPads (lucky them!). (NASASpaceflight.com: “Progress successfully docks to ISS; stage set for return of manned Soyuz flight”.) The next crew to launch in November will be ISS-29/30.

The Mars-500 experiment ends this week, 4 November! The crew seem to have survived with their sanity intact :-).

China’s launch of the Tiangong 1 space station module on 29/9 was successful. On 31/10 Shenzhou 8 was launched, an unmanned version of the capsule, and remotely docked to Tiangong on 2/11.

The Phobos-Grunt probe is set to launch next week, 8 or 9 November, if there are no delays – the launch window is from 5-25 November, otherwise there are another 2 years or so until the next Mars launch opportunity. It has what appears to be an official website.

I decided not to buy the Spaceflight issues mentioned last entry as they were speculative only, and the magazine too expensive.

Heavenly bodies

The cause of the Soyuz rocket crash last month was given as being due to a clogged fuel line leading to a gas generator, thought to be human error rather than a design flaw. (NASASpaceflight.com articles: 31/8, 15/9.) Crew launches on the Soyuz rocket have been delayed a little, and the next Progress launch (Progress M-13M/45P) is set for 30 October. Crew launches are on the Soyuz-FG, which has a modifed fuel injection system on the engines of the first and second stages, but it and the Soyuz-U have the same 11S510-PVB Blok-I third stage.

China is to launch the first module of its planned space station next week on a Long-March Ⅱ-F carrier rocket (MSNBC/Spacedaily articles). The module is called Tiangong 1, or “Heavenly Palace”. The module is to be used to practice rendezvous and docking, initially with the unmanned Shenzhou-8 that will be subsequently launched. If it is successful, it will be followed by Tiangong 2 and 3 space labs in a few years.

New Scientist magazine had an article about the support operations for the Mars-500 mission in its 17 September issue. (Text online here.)

The July and August issues of BIS Spaceflight magazine have a 2-part article on death in space. I am debating whether to buy the issues as the magazine is now quite expensive in Australia ($17) and hard to find. On browsing through the July issue in a newsagent, the first part was more speculation about various medical issues that might occur during a long spaceflight. A bit disappointing as I was hoping for an actual list of procedures from NASA, or whoever! The somewhat morbid topic has interested me for years, but there are no actual documents online, only occasional speculations on forums. I actually wrote out my own version of such a document in the style of other online ISS documents as part of a somewhat irreverent short story I did some years ago (“Houston, we have a corpse”) that included a space autopsy (“2001: a space autopsy” – I had some fun making up those headings :-):

Progress launch failure

For the first time after 135 launches, a Progress cargo ship failed to reach orbit on the 136^th launch (since January 1978). Progress M-12M (44P) launched on 24/8, but the third/Blok 1 rocket stage of its Soyuz-U rocket failed 5m 25s into flight, achieving only a sub-orbital trajectory, and both crashed in the Choysk district of ​​the Altai Republic (South Siberia).

• NASASpaceflight.com
• NASA ISS news
• Orbiter Forum thread
• MSNBC.com/Space.com report
• Progress infographic

This comes the week after the telecommunications satellite “Express-AM4” failed to reach orbit on 17/8 after the Briz-M upper stage of the Proton-M rocket lost power after its fourth burn (NASASpaceflight.com report). Both are manufactured by Khrunichev. The damage for this, including launch costs, exceeds 20 billion rubles.

Khrunichev also manufacture the RD-0110 (11D55) liquid-propellant rocket engine used on the 3^rd stage of the Soyuz rockets

The loss of the cargo is a setback but is not yet critical for the ISS crew, who have enough supplies to last until the next Progress launch on 28/10 (STS-135 also brought up a lot of supplies). However the next crew launch in September will be delayed until the cause for the malfunction is found, as they go up on a Soyuz-FG. The ISS also needs Progress ships for its periodic reboostings.

The Soyuz era

Half-way through the year and only 3 entries here! My former enthusiasm has really slackened off.

The final flight of the Space Shuttle program, STS-135 Atlantis, landed safely on 21/7 after a mission to the ISS. There has been 30 years of Shuttle missions (¾ of my life). Now Russia will be the sole means of transport to the space station until the U.S. develops its next generation of transport, either by NASA or commercial companies. Exactly what this may be seems uncertain (I have not been following the heated forum debates much) – the current NASA version seems to be the Space Launch System. I am dubious as to whether commercial companies can develop spaceflight quickly as this is a difficult and expensive endeavour.

“Russians: ‘It’s our space age now’ ”, Cosmic Log, 23/7. A translation of a Roskosmos article about the Shuttle retirement is causing some ire (see NASA Watch entry) because the tone of the article appears gloating. It’s unfortunate if that is the case, though one commenter points out: “you have to be aware that russian is a harsh language, so a literal translation may come across as saying one thing, but in reality, they are saying something with a far different tone.”

The Mars-500 crew are still enroute home. They have been in “flight” 415 days, and only have around 4 months to go! (The experiment finishes sometime in November; there is no set date yet.) That period of time has gone swiftly for me, as years seem to do now; I wonder if their perception of time is similar.

The Russian Space Agency Roskosmos got a new head or chief on 29 April: Vladimir Popovkin, formerly the  First Deputy Minister of Defense, replacing Anatolii Perminov.

Safe landing

Soyuz TMA-01M landed apparently safely yesterday (16) at 07:54, despite various glitches after its launch – see James Oberg articles “A Digital Soyuz”, September 2010 and “Digital Soyuz Return Could Be Rocky”, 11/3/2011. From the 16/3 ISS On-Orbit Status:

TMA-01M (#701), the first fully “digital” Soyuz, undocked from the MRM2 (Mini Research Module 2) Poisk port early this morning at 12:26 a.m. EDT, after the crew had performed leak checks of the vestibule area between the MRM2 and the Soyuz spacecraft, of their Sokol suits and of the hatch between the Descent Module (SA) and Orbital Module (BO). Three minutes after physical undocking, Soyuz performed the first manual separation burn. This was followed at ~12:33 a.m. by the planned test of the new RODK Manual Attitude Control in Digital Mode which provides automated LVLH (Local Vertical-Local Horizontal) attitude control. After a second manual sep burn (~12:39 a.m.), Kaleri performed the planned test of the ROAK Manual Attitude Control in Analog Mode, which involved the three new orbit-installed rate sensors (“micro ammeters”), designed to provide the crew with information on roll rate & roll angle (officials later pronounced both tests successful). At about 2:56 a.m., the crew activated the spacecraft’s VTsVK MCS (Motion Control System) “Chaika”. The actual de-orbit burn of 4 min 17 sec duration came at 3:03 a.m., resulting in a 115.2 m/sec deceleration. Tri-module separation occurred at 3:28 a.m.. 16 sec after the separation command, software pitched the PAO (Instrumentation/Propulsion Module) in the rear to a specific angle (-78.5 deg from reference axis) which, if PAO would have remained connected to the SA/Descent Module, would have resulted in enough heating on the connecting truss to melt it, thus ensuring separation. Atmospheric entry followed at 3:31 a.m. and nominal parachute deployment at 3:40 a.m.. Following initial observation by Russian SAR personnel in two helicopters, the Soyuz vehicle landed in snow at 3:54 a.m., tipping over in the wind.

“Star City at 50”, Air & Space Magazine, 1/3/2011. Article by Michael Cassutt giving an overview of where the Cosmonaut Training Center is now, and the challenges it faces (mainly chronic underfunding). It is rather disappointing the Russian Air Force does not seem interested in manned spaceflight; this surely would have some strategic value:

Though Roskosmos owns Star City, the agency doesn’t necessarily like the arrangement. According to former cosmonaut Yuri Baturin, “Roskosmos did not plan to absorb GCTC. But the Ministry of Defense specified reductions in armed forces, and simply included GCTC in that.” Apollo-Soyuz astronaut Tom Stafford put it more directly: “The Russian air force couldn’t afford to keep paying the bills. They don’t have an interest in manned spaceflight—they never really did.”

The cosmonaut-pilots also seem to have lost their training aircraft:

Under military control, the training center’s flight support unit, the Seregin Wing, had 16 aircraft, from Aero L-39 training jets to Tupolev Tu-154 transports. These were used by the cosmonauts to maintain pilot proficiency, and for weightlessness training. But in late 2009, the Russian air force disbanded the wing and dispersed the airplanes. “Except for one,” Krikalev notes, “a Tu-154 with glass hatches in its fuselage,” which was formerly used by the Ministry of Defense in NATO’s “Open Skies” program.

12 April marks 50 years since Yurii Gagarin’s first and only spaceflight, and the first manned spaceflight. The problem with these anniversaries is that, with the Russian space program at least, a lot of energy seems to be spent looking nostalgically backward, rather than planning missions for the future. Countries such as China (well, it’s the only other country outside of Russia and the USA to have independently flown humans into space) seem to be forging ahead in their slow but methodical manner. I would be tempted to wager that China will surprise everyone by announcing a manned Mars mission by the end of this decade!

Mars landing

Haven’t been posting for the usual reasons.

The Mars-500 crew reached Mars orbit in late January, landed on Mars on 12 February and reached the mission’s halfway point two days later. They performed 3 simulated EVAs (February 14, 18 and 22) and have now departed, to arrive at Earth in November. They still seem to be in mostly good psychological health!

The first ship of the new Soyuz variant, TMA-01M (700 series), launched to the ISS on 7 October with Expedition 25/26. Space Shuttle Discovery launched on 24/2 after a 4-month delay. The Japan Space Agency’s HTV-2 Konotori (H-Ⅱ Transfer Vehicle, launched 22/1) and ESA’s ATV Johannes Kepler (launched 16/2) are also docked, so all the vehicles of the international partners are up there at the moment! There was a plan to undock the Soyuz TMA-01M to do a flyaround and take photos (this has not been done since STS-71 Atlantis docked with Mir), but Roskosmos decided against it, disappointingly, as the TMA-01M is still classified as a test vehicle.

Six new cosmonaut candidates, approved by an interdepartmental commission on 26 April and 12 October, begun an 18-month training course at GCTC, Star City, starting 15 November and ending July 2012. The candidates, all male, are:

• Andrei Nikolaevich Babkin (RSC Energiya)
  Андрей Николаевич Бабкин
• Aleksei Mikhailovich Khomenchuk (GCTC)
  Алексей Михайлович Хоменчук
• Sergei Vladimirovich Kud’-Sverchkov (RSC Energiya)
  Сергей Владимирович Кудь-Сверчков
• Denis Vladimirovich Matveev (GCTC)
  Денис Владимирович Матвеев
• Svyatoslav Andreievich Morosov (RSC Energiya)
  Святослав Андреевич Моросов
• Ivan Viktorovich Vagner (RSC Energiya)
  Иван Викторович Вагнер

See my Cosmonaut Group page for links. Annoyingly, no official photos are taken until they are assigned a spaceflight, so portraits must be scrounged from the Internet.

While updating that page, I noticed that a new photo of Anton Shkaplerov at the Spacefacts site shows him as rather nice-looking! :-)

The Cosmonaut Group is now united:

Roscosmos Head Signs the Order to Establish United Cosmonaut Corps

Roscosmos Head Anatoly Perminov signed the Order “About Establishment of Roscosmos’ United Cosmonaut Corps” of Dec. 7, 2010.

The order defines completion of Roscosmos Cosmonaut Corps establishment in GCTC by Jan. 1, 2011.

The Corps is to unite cosmonauts of three groups - GCTC, RSC-Energia and IBMP – in a single infrastructure in order to “enhance cosmonaut selection and training effectiveness and to maintain coordinated national policy in human space missions”.

Source: Roskosmos news, 11/12/2010 (Russian version; official Order)

Mars and magic curtains

Energiya has a brief report at its site (also at Roskosmos) on the cause of the Progress M-06M docking abort last month: due to interference over a communication channel, a cosmonaut accidentally pressed one of the buttons on the control panel.

“Difficult rebirth for Russian space science”, BBC News, 29/6/2010. Article by Anatoly Zak on the difficult task facing Russian engineers trying to relaunch their country’s long-dormant unmanned space exploration program.

“Russia to kick off construction of a new spaceport”, BBC News, 20/7/2010. Восточный, Vostochnyi (“Eastern”) cosmodrome, an alternative to Baikonur, is to be constructed in Russia’s Far East, intended to be finished by 2015.

“Magic Anti-Radiation Curtain to be Installed in the ISS”, RK, 6/7/2010. An anti-radiation curtain developed by IMBP was delivered on M-06M:

Progress M-06M cargo supply vehicle has delivered a so-called “magic curtain” to the International Space Station. Flight engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin will install the curtain in the starboard’s cabin of the Zvezda module. The curtain designed by IBMP has special pockets for special wet hygienic towels used by cosmonauts onboard the station. The towels are saturated with hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, which mitigate space radiation effects. The curtain is equipped with the radiation doze meters. Additional anti-radiation crew protection may be provided by three-layer wet towels on the walls of the cabins, thus mitigating radiation effects for cosmonauts, scientists believe.

Result of Matreshka experiment carried out in the station since 2004 show that the radiation is about two times weaker in the center of the station then near the walls. Phantom Matreshka-R is to monitor anti-radiation effectiveness of the wet towels. Experiment Matreshka is to study and to analyze radiation dose distribution in cosmonaut's body during long-term mission aboard the International space station (ISS). Dose from ionizing space radiation was determined with the help of thermoluminescent dosimeters mounted in conditional depths of critical organs in human body modeled in a dosimetric device, i.e. a ball-like tissue-equivalent phantom designed and manufactured in Russia for international space experiment Matreshka-R.

“Roscosmos Head Anatoly Perminov: Mission to Mars is to Take Place after 2035”, RK, 7/7/2010. More disappointing confirmation that there won’t be a Russian Martian attempt for some decades. I hope circumstances alter this! (Perhaps discovery of an alien artifact somewhere in the Solar System…)

Roscosmos Head Anatoly Perminov stated that the mission to Mars is planned after 2035, answering the questions of the students at the opening ceremony of International Students Science School “Space Exploration: Theory and Practice” in Russian Federal Space Agency. “Russia, Europe, the USA are interested in Martian missions today. India and China also have similar projects. There are more talks about human space missions to Mars. Russian Government have approved Federal Space Program which clearly defines sequence of automated space missions, as well as future human missions. The basic strategy implies Martian program to be implemented after 2035,” Perminov stated.

He also explained that there are no engines and propulsions systems capable to deliver humans to Mars in 2-3 months. “This is feasible only with nuclear propulsion. Many countries are trying to develop engines of new type, which can make mission time 20 times less- to reduce it from 1.5 years to 2 months,” Roscosmos Head said.

He added that there is another issue – human protection against solar radiation and radiation of the nuclear propulsion (if it is used). “This leads us to increasing mass of the launcher. No country is able of reaching Mars or other planets quickly. We are facing the energy problem. That’s why 2035 is defined in our plans,” Perminov said. “There is another option proposed by Russia and negotiated with heads of other space agencies. Interplanetary vehicles could be assembled in LEO. This approach can help us making the interplanetary missions sooner. Young generation will work with it, develop a new propulsion with a brand new operation principle,” Roscosmos Head concluded.

The Mars-500 crew are now over 2 months into their mission. They are no longer in real-time contact with TsUP:

25/07/2010: Today is important crucial point in the life and work of the crew because voice communication sessions will be completely ceased since the 26th of July. We change over to batch communication with gradual (stepwise) increment of the delays of communication. Batch communication means video-voice messages to the crew and similar answers. It can be used for the implementation of difficult experiments, for regular medical control and for psychological support. In addition to this the communication with the crew via electronic messages will be kept.

Blogger/Google have at last instigated comment spam filtering, so perhaps I can block my persistent Chinese spammer!

Progress gone astray

Progress M-06M launched successfully on 30 June, but its attempted docking on 2 July was aborted when 20 minutes/3 km from the Station:

Progress Docking Abort: Docking of Progress M-06M/38P was aborted about 20 minutes before its scheduled linkup with ISS at 12:58 p.m. EDT due to loss of radio lock between KURS-P on the SM (Service Module) and KURS-A on Progress. The cargo drone passed by ISS at a safe distance and continues to be in its safe fly-by mode, circling Earth along with ISS every 92 minutes. Docking will not be re-attempted today. ISS systems are being reconfigured back to nominal stage operations configuration. Evaluations are underway for subsequent docking attempts.

– ISS OOR 2/7/2010

The backup manual docking system (ТОРУ, TORU), controlled by crew on the ISS, was also unsuccessful when activated. The next docking attempt will be on Sunday 4 July. (Relevant NASASpaceflight.com thread)

[Update: Progress M-06M successfully docked on 4 July at 16:17:26 to Zvezda SM.]

Yest kasaniye! At 12:17 p.m. EDT, Progress M-06M (38P) docked successfully to the SM (Service Module) aft port under KURS autopilot control, followed by a final DPO post-contact thrusting burn, docking probe retraction and hook closure (“sborka”) after motion damp-out while the ISS was in free drift for ~20 min (12:17 p.m.-12:37 p.m.). At “hooks closed” signal, the SM returned to active attitude control, maneuvering the ISS to LVLH TEA (local vertical/local horizontal Torque Equilibrium Attitude) at ~12:37 p.m. Control authority returns to US Momentum Management at ~2:10 p.m. Russian thrusters will be disabled temporarily during clamps install and leak check (2:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.). [This was the second docking attempt after yesterday’s aborted linkup, now traced to an interruption of the TORU radio signal by the SM’s Klest/Simvol television system. The dropout of the TORU teleoperated rendezvous & docking system then generated the command “cancel dynamic operations” which aborted KURS automatic rendezvous mode and switched Progress to a safe, passive flightpath, as designed. For today’s docking, TORU, which is usually in “hot standby” mode during Kurs-controlled dockings, was not activated.]

21 days later

The Mars-500 crew are 21 days or three weeks into their “mission”.

On their Google site a serial story is being published each week, each chapter written by a different Russian author. Unfortunately the only translation provided is a computer one, which is imperfect at best – I wish they had spent some $ on a human translator. The title of the first chapter is computer translated as “Start need to cancel?” which human translates into something like “Cancel launch?”, and struggling to make sense of the tortured syntax takes away from enjoying the story.

“How risky is it to rely on Russian spaceflight?”, James Oberg, MSNBC.com, 15/6.

“The People’s Capsule”, Foreign Policy, August 2010. A rather gloomy overview of the Russian space program and its manned Soyuz spaceship.

Locked in

Mars-500 is officially underway as of yesterday, with the crew secluded until November 2011. It is disappointing, though, that no women are participating – “Discrimination row after Russia ‘bans’ women from 18-month mock mission to Mars” suggests that they were unofficially banned for fears of repeating the SFINCSS-99 experiment. The decision has received criticism from various experts.

“The absence of women in Mars-500 Project yet again proves the presence on old-fashioned Earthly gender stereotypes,” complained Mikhail Salkin of the Moscow Human Rights Protection Centre. “The organisers were likely set on choosing men from the start. We suspect the endurance tests they set were more suitable to men than women, and the results will be a biased judgement because it will only apply to males, so will not fit the full picture. “Women should have equal access to any job so we are ready to apply to the Russian General Prosecutor on this and ask him to investigate. The organisers have also forgotten the social tension they can face among six men which might have been softened by having a woman on board.”

[…]

Psychiatrist Egor Rozenkov warned single sex isolation was “more dangerous” than sending a mixed group. “There is a lot of psychological and psychiatric evidence about the social pathologies that develop in isolated male groups, like in jails, the army or schools. “And don’t forget about the danger of sexual inversion. From the point of view of the health of the crew it will be a huge mistake to ‘send’ not a mixed but an all-male crew.”

Soyuz TMA-17 landed on 2 June with ISS-22/23. TMA-19 will launch on 15 June with ISS-24/25.

U.K. Russian space expert Rex Hall died of cancer on 31 May aged 63. Tributes at CollectSPACE, NASASpaceflight.com.